Siren's Song by Mary Weber Read Free Book Online Page A

than any of the nights with the human monsters that would follow.
    Deep. Freezing.
    Suffocating the song voice I’d all but forgotten.
    Always whispering, “You survived. Even when you weren’t supposed to.”
    I survived.
    But wasn’t supposed to.
    I gasp awake, only to choke and reach for my face—and find tears there at the ache of a memory long forgotten. My dad’s face. My mum’s hands. Our last night together as a family before their deaths.
    Except we weren’t a real family according to Eogan. Not by blood relation, anyway.
    I cough and wince at the red lights splitting through the fog of my mind. And overhead—that sound of rain. It’s hitting the glossed-over glass walls and ceiling with a harsh tap tap tapping .
    I curl my fingers to force it to stop, but it just keeps going. Harder, louder than before. Pounding into my brain as if it can punch holes to get in through my skull and gain access.
    Access to what?
    Images of my owners, one, two, three, flash before my eyes. I blink as the memories of beatings and mocking voices play in fast increments through my head. “You’ll do as I say or Draewulf will come to eat your brains.” My first owner’s words flip around, drawing up recollections of washing his clothes. Then his son’s.
    I shudder, and somewhere within my chest a cry pushes up and out at these faces I cannot bear. These people who destroyed me.
    These people whom I then destroyed.
    â€œMake it stop. I don’t want to remember,” I hear my voice gasping over and over. “Please make it stop.”
    Something pricks my neck and the drumming raindrop voices fade, along with my mind.
    I’M IN EOGAN’S BRON CASTLE NOW, SPEAKING WITH SIR GOWON. EXCEPT he’s not listening to me. He’s refusing to understand that Eogan has been taken over by Draewulf. I reach my fingers for his waist-shirt and twist. “What does the Elegy 96 say?”
    He grips a hand over mine. “You’ll kindly unhand me.”
    I step closer. Squeeze harder. The hissing from the wraiths outside the room grows louder. “What does it say?” I demand. “What does Eogan think has begun?” Suddenly my arms are crawling and my veins, my chest . . .
    â€œNym, stop!” Rasha says.
    â€œRead his intentions. What do you see?”
    Her hand tugs at me. “You’re going to kill him! We’ll find it another way. We’ll ask Isobel! You can’t do—”
    Can’t I? I stare at her as the heat from my fury floods the ice in my blood. I am beyond finished with this man’s uncaring for the world going to the pit of hulls all around him while he stays in his comfortable fool ignorance. I pull, yanking the energy from his chest bones. Like marrow I can taste.
    Sir Gowon wheezes and stumbles forward. He opens his mouth and I sense it—the words on the tip of his confused, tormented mind. I will make him speak or else—
    Then he gasps:
    â€œWhen shadows are sewn to sinew and bone, and darkness rules the land,
    Let storms collide and Elisedd’s hope arise,
    Before the beast forces fate’s hand.
    Just as from one it came and to five was entrusted, to only one it can go, to rule or to seek justice.
    If his demise is to be Elemental,
    Interrupt the blood of kings in each land.”
    I stare.
    â€œElegy 96 is a prophecy,” he slurs. “Handed down for generations of Bron kings. It’s a foretelling of what is to come.”
    Twenty seconds go by as every vein in my body is curling up like roots around my chest.
    And then my mind is flashing backward to the witch’s house. “He’s taking the blood in order,” Draewulf’s wife says. “He needed Eogan first. Interrupt the blood of kings, and whatever you do, don’t let him take the final one.”
    Come on, Nym. Wake up.
    I try to pry my eyes open but they’re too heavy.
    And now my memories are moving